How long can you live with silence?
During the last full week of February my wife and I traveled to Arizona for a few days of sun—and rain!—hikes in the mountains, and a family visit. The week was capped by two days in a remote monastery in southeastern Arizona, surrounded by sweeping desert and mountain views.
Santa Rita Abbey is home to a community of Cistercian Catholic Sisters. (Learn more at http://www.santaritaabbey.org/our-community/ .) The only public sound in their life together is the readings and music of worship five times a day, which we sampled. The Sisters offer guests accommodations for retreat. Silent retreat.
How long can you live with silence? How long without talking, without TV, phone or internet. How comfortable are you without background noise?
Our lives are typically bombarded by visual and auditory stimulation. “Relaxing” for many folks means turning to news, music, entertainment, texting, or social media. We as a society tend not to welcome sustained silence, maybe especially in times of social and political stress. Maybe some of this is due to the conviction that silence is not really silence; without distractions we fear having to face our internal chatter!
Twentieth-century martyr and German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: Let him who cannot be alone, beware of community… Let him who is not in community, beware of being alone. The thing we naturally avoid—if instead we embrace it—can sometimes be our saving grace. Our two days of silence in the desert were refreshing, relaxing, life-giving and healing.
How long can you live with silence?
Silence as a spiritual discipline is about regularly, intentionally creating gracious space for the Holy Spirit to work its saving power in areas of our lives filled by other less life-giving stimuli. During these forty days of Lent I invite you to look for opportunities within our life together to learn about setting aside what we think we can’t live without.
Abundant grace and peace be with you!
Pr. Scott
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